Some years ago, I attended a tax grievance seminar, hosted by Legislator Ellen Birnbaum. When the representative from the Assessor finished her tutorial, a woman sitting behind me raised her hand to ask a question. She looked disheveled. Her clothes looked like they hadn’t been cleaned or pressed in a long time and her general appearance was somewhat unkempt. She was complaining that her tax rates had gone up sharply since younger families with money to spend were transforming her New Hyde Park neighborhood into a neighborhood of heavily stuccoed McMansions.
The assessor told her not to worry: the higher property value would serve her well when she sold her house, and she would get more money for it. Except there was one problem: she had no intention of uprooting herself. I assumed the woman was widowed since she was by herself and of a certain age. Chances are, she had lived here for decades, sent her kids to school here, and this is the only community she knows. All that is familiar to her is here. And she was being driven to desperation.
Personally, I was appalled by the cavalier attitude of the County employee, who revealed in one sentence what they really think of you: they can toss you away like a used Kleenex.
Let’s reprise recent quotes from this newspaper:
From a Republican, April 19: “The Empire Center for Public Policy, concluded: “The financial incentive for high earners to move themselves and their businesses from New York to states with low or no income taxes has never ever been higher than it already is.”
From a self described “progressive,” April 5th:
“The gap between the rich and the poor is obscene and getting worse, but it’s the federal government which should be closing the wealth gap, not the states. When states like New York attempt to foster income equity with higher taxes, rich residents just leave. Any NYS Legislator who doesn’t get this is myopic and the capital drain from New York will only accelerate with higher state tax proposals.”
Both of these writers did a stint at NIFA, the Nassau Infinite Failure Association. And the logic of their argument? Pray tell, how is someone who is likely paying north of $30,000 a year in local taxes incentivized to move over these paltry state tax increases?
You can see from both of these comments what informs the culture of our political leadership: the privileged must be served before all others. Not because our survival depends on it.
Theirs does.
And for the residents unaffected by these tax hikes? They have never been given a moment of concern. They’ve been getting squeezed for decades. You have one purpose as long as you live here, or as one CSEA member once told me, “pay your taxes, you puke.”
Imagine the gall: You’ve endured a kleptocracy that has driven, over time, literally hundreds of thousands of families off Long Island, and yet, despite this decades long mass exodus, not one word of complaint. Now here they are, hat in hand, begging billionaires not to pull up stakes. Everyone else? “See ya!”
In the meantime, they can trade voter bloc support for hundreds of millions in additional tax liabilities. They can order up payroll padding, police precincts, carve out ghettoized school districts while putting up “Not In Our Town” signs. They can do anything they want, while they point the finger of blame at everyone else. But accountability to the majority of taxpayers, and call attention to the most punishing
share of local taxation to those who really feel it?
Crickets.
For pity’s sake people, please, please, please don’t do anything to offend the delicacy of the 1%! Why, they might be “forced” to move, and one of them is easily worth at least 100 of you!
But they won’t move. Why?
Unlike that widow, they can afford to stay. And if they think they’re being abused because they’re funding too much of the profligacy they enabled thanks to a warped tax code, maybe these wise men of public policy can try considering other options.
They can start by undoing the damage they created here.
Donald Davret
Roslyn
